' surprise of the century....'

once in a while, there will be a couple of shock soccer results. like wolves winning man utd for example. and at times, the favorites may even be playing consistently well for 90 mins only to lose eventually without knowing what hit them, or perhaps even a wrong call by the referee for an injury time penalty. the debate equivalent happened last friday. anglican high defeated catholic high in a split decision over the motion AHS proposed: THBT that euthanasia should be made legal. now i mentioned in the previous entry that i wished that the 'dictators' would give nothing but their best and leave nothing to fate to decide this round. the dictators did and we're proud of them. but to fate, indeed it did too. now an overwhelming majority of adjudicators would tell u that they're 'complete idiots' so as to speak, meaning they until u provide a full analysis and links to an argument, the adjudicator cannot merit you on your argument, and conversely not fault u until the opposing team brings about a valid rebuttal to the argument. and very unfortunately, 2 of the adjudicators that round apparantly chose to penalise the opposition's (chs) arguments on the basis of their own intellectual evaluation and not through the proposition's retorts in the debate. it was by all accounts, in simon cowell's words the 'surprise of the century', although cowell would have made for a more discerning judge! i hate to sound like a sore loser but i truly feel, and many others too (like the chinese high boys who vocalised their thoughts into 'tai ko!' after hearing the result, only to be chided by the AHS 3rd who overheard them) that AHS were not deserving winners. if that's the way they're gonna go, and should they be presented with more highly experienced and indeed more professional adjudicators, they're gonna get thrashed. to get an idea about just how good AHS is, i'll describe one AHS debate that i adjudicated before. then their 3rd who's called alexis debated in this vjc invitational debate. i think i described it in an early blog entry about the fact that this alexis actually questioned the house in a most eloquently phrased argument asking 'why don't you have sex in front of your parents if you think they won't get angry', and by the way, the motioned had no explicit links to sex, it was about teenage romance. in my written adjudicator's sheet, i described her speech as 'sexually charged' and it was no surprised that she had the lowest content marks. a little wonder as we realised on friday night, when in a stroke of ingenuity (provoked by sheer boredom of waiting for a result that we would had believed to be a forgone conclusion) that 'ALEXIS' is an anagram of 'LAI SEX'.........
the part II of the surprise of the century: team II defeated RI II! shaun was first and did a reasonable decent job. a good job in fact. kenneth as second was kinda jittery but ok. fengyao was the true reckoning. he shows great raw potential. in our opinion, comparably, his performance put the RI 3rd in a very bad position with firstly many arguments to deal with, and the fact that his arguments completely sucked and it was all the more glaring when compared to fengyao.
S.O.T.C no. 3, the above mentioned RI 3rd was the best speaker of the round.
whatever it is, we told the 'dictators' that yes while winning is important , it is in fact the process of learning and the friendships made are the real assets in debating. having had bosom friends in xander, sow chen and trev for years now, borrowing kwek's catchphrase : ' i didn't say that because i had to, i really believe in what i said '. and i really hope the 'dictators' can understand this - without having to go through the burden of defeat and shatter dreams that so many CH team went through, that is.